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Friday, November 16, 2012

The title of this entry is a
bit of a misnomer. There won’t really be any writing advice, just some truths
about writing. Some might call them hard truths, but they’re just really how
things are and it’s up to you whether you take them hard or not.First of all, congrats to
everyone who is even remotely adhering to the NaNoWriMo schedule. Halfway
through, you’ve probably experienced your fair share of ups and downs. There
have been days when you’ve met or exceeded the prescribed word count and those
days have ended with a smile on your face. There have been days when you’ve
failed to write more than a few sentences—or anything at all—and on those days
you have been grumpy, irritated, and anxious. I’m sure that for some of you,
your daily disposition has corresponded to the number of words you’ve typed out,
and the last two weeks have undoubtedly been a rollercoaster of emotion. If
your mood is particularly dark and low and frustrated at this point, you’re
probably thinking that this experience has shown you that you aren’t a writer.
And you’re probably right.But even if you’re on cloud 9
about your progress and every day is one of unfettered joy, full of typing and
having fun and marveling at your word count, chances are you are also not going
to come out of this a full-time writer.The fact is if you’re feeling
anything other than a calm neutrality about the writing process, you’re
probably not going to be in the writing game for the long haul.Here’s the deep dark secret
about writers: they don’t particularly feel one way or another about writing. They
don’t hate it (obviously), nor do they like it all that much. Even that old saw
about writers who hate writing but love having written isn’t really true.They sort of just write. All
the time, every day.Writers are compelled to write,
simple as that. They don’t get too high or low about it, they just do it. Feeling
bad about an unproductive writing day and feeling happy about a good writing
day are both reactions writers—professional ones—never have. For them, writing is
just something that needs to be done every day, in a sort of vaguely
dispassionate way. I’ll try to draw an easy-to-understand parallel :Think of writing like brushing
your teeth.This is an analogy all but the most
hygienically negligent can understand. You brush your teeth daily. No matter
what. It’s like not even an option to go to bed without having done it. You can
be bone-dead tired, or crazy busy, or stuck in some foreign place far from home
surrounded by unfamiliar people—you will still make time to brush your teeth. You
even do it twice a day, preferably.You don’t really “like” or “hate”
doing it. If anything, it’s a little inconvenient, or boring, or a chore. But
you do it because you are compelled. Sure, there are very practical reasons for
doing it: the prevention of tooth decay, the elimination of bad breath, etc.,
etc. But I don’t think that stuff goes through anyone’s mind when they are
actually in the process of brushing their teeth. I know it doesn’t go through mine.
I just do it without thinking too much about it, and I suspect you do too.Brushing our teeth is such a
part of our daily routine and so disconnected from its long-term rewards that
we don’t feel “happy” that we do it every night. We’re not high-fiving
ourselves after another successful tooth brushing. We also don’t stress about
it during the day, wondering whether we’ll be able to fit it into our schedule.
We know we will, no matter what. And we don’t feel miserable about going a
whole day without brushing our teeth, because it doesn’t happen. Ok, there’s
that handful of times in your entire life
when you go a day without brushing your teeth. But those are very rare
occasions indeed.This pretty accurately
describes how true writers think of writing. They don’t get down about not
writing, mostly because it never happens. (Even those authors who put out a
book a decade are writing furiously every day, I guarantee you, perhaps even more
than anyone else.) They might conceive of “feeling bad” if they didn’t write
for a week, but it’d be little more than a thought experiment, like if someone
asked you how bad you’d feel after a week of not brushing your teeth. You’d
imagine you’d feel pretty awful about it, but any speculation is pointless
because it’d never happen. Not brushing your teeth for a week wouldn't feel bad
so much as just plain wrong.Also, writers aren’t constantly
patting themselves on the back for writing, in the same way we don’t give
ourselves props for brushing our teeth. And just like writers, we don’t
necessarily take any long-term satisfaction from the activity. Someone’s likely
reaction to a lifetime free of tooth decay would probably not be “Go me!”,
rather “Well, yeah.” It’s not too hard to see why doing something like brushing
your teeth because you think it’s fun or it makes you happy or it leaves you
with a sense of accomplishment could be very dangerous. Fun things can become
un-fun, and dangled carrots lose their appeal. If sustained activity is what is
desired, better to be compelled than rewarded; the compelled person will
continue to do something no matter what, and the ones who do something for the
feeling they get from it will always be vaguely dissatisfied and eventually
quit doing that thing.It's ultimately kind of inexplicable
why writers write. I don’t think there’s a lot of choice involved. Writers
write in the same way that birds fly south for the winter or bears hibernate. That
fable about the scorpion and the frog seems relevant here.
For those struggling through this month, you have my sympathies and I hope at
the end of the month you’ll be buoyed by the knowledge that there’s this thing
you don’t ever have to do again. For the others who are deriving great joy from
this process, I am happy for you and admit to regarding you with a certain
amount of wistfulness. There was a time when my own words gave me a fair amount
of immediate pleasure, when writing was unqualified fun. Eventually I found
Hunter S. Thompson’s sentiment to be true when he said that writing, like
[having sex], is only fun for amateurs.But of course we all start out
as amateurs, and there’s nothing wrong with having fun. For those having a
blast with NaNoWriMo, I will say this: If that happy, joyful feeling of writing
devolves into something a little less pleasurable, if it becomes harder for you
to write, if you don’t exactly dread writing but you also aren’t especially
ecstatic about it…and yet despite all of this you can’t stop writing, then you’re
probably a full-blown, no-holds-barred writer. What I’m trying to say is don’t
be too worried if the fun goes away. Writing isn’t really supposed to be fun;
like anything worthwhile it’s hard work and stressful and time-consuming. And
that’s probably as good an explanation as to why we writers keep coming back to
it.To paraphrase David Mamet: Of
course writing is hard work. If it weren’t, then what’d be the point?DHS

Thursday, November 1, 2012

I hope everyone had a nice
Halloween. I don’t know about anyone else, but my consumption of Snickers minis
goes through the roof this time of year. Good stuff.

The All Hallow’s Read promotion
for Deadly Reflections was a roaring
success. Thousands of readers snagged a free copy over the last two days, and I
couldn’t be more pleased.

Today marks the release of the
“paperback” version of Deadly Reflections,
or whatever the equivalent is for an ebook. It has a brand new cover and
there’s a short Q&A with yours truly at the end. There were also some
typographical fixes made, so it should read cleanly across all the devices on
which it can be read. If you enjoyed the book in the past, be sure to tell your
friends or followers. I’d like to see DR
continue to find appreciative readers as we move forward. (Also, check out the
expanded interview with Patrick Mattox in the Deadly Reflections section of
this blog, where we talk about the creation of the new cover.)

November 1st also marks the first
day of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. This is the time of year
when everyone with literary ambitions becomes month-long weekend warriors
attempting to complete a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month. To
accomplish this, one must maintain a daily output of 1,667 words—no small feat.

There have been some snide
remarks made by “real writers” about this event. They seem to take offense at
the prospect that some neophyte with a word processor thinks he or she can dash
out a novel just like that, as if it were that easy.

To that, I say “balderdash.”
(With maybe a sprinkling of “poppycock” and “bunkum.”)

If someone wants to partake in
the venerable tradition of written storytelling, I am more than willing to
welcome them into the fold. I think that, yes, the newcomers will find the work
challenging and the discipline it takes to sit and write for a couple hours a
day hard to master. But, if they stick with it, I believe they will also find
how rewarding it can be to have something to show for the day, week, month.
And, perhaps, despite all the frustrations and heartbreak and anxiety that come
with writing, some of those people will decide to continue doing it after
November, and some of those people
will enrich the world with great stories in the future. There is and always
will be a need for great storytellers. This is a month full of promise, for
everyone, not just the writers.

And it starts today. So: if you
have an idea (or even if you don’t; there have been plenty of great “plot-less”
novels), try writing a couple thousand words before midnight. And if you feel
good about the results, try it again tomorrow. See how many days you can string
together, and at the end of the month you might find yourself pleasantly surprised.
(Remember: This is mostly about quantity. A rough first draft after a month’s
work is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, it’s something to be very, very proud
of.)

With my next novel deep into
the editing process, I am not quite ready to start a new novel. But that doesn’t
mean I’m not constantly writing something, whether it be an essay, or a short
story, or just writing to see whether something will lead somewhere. So in an
act of solidarity with all those attempting the Herculean feat this month, I
will duly put in my daily work and try to hit the 1,667 mark every day. At the
end of the day, I’ll post the number of words I managed to wrestle to the page on
my Twitter and hopefully we can encourage each other to keep going. Let’s just
have fun, let go, and write.

For all those hoping to have a
productive month, I wish you the best of luck.

About Me

So I'm officially an author. My book is called Deadly Reflections, and is available on the Kindle Store right this second. I encourage anyone who likes a good love story with paranormal aspects to check it out!